I had a brief conversation with an old acquaintance of mine who was into the Soul Calibur II scene.
As we were saying our farewells I quickly stated, “Keep it up with the So Cal scene!” His response?
“So Cal? That shit got broken in high level. No one plays that it anymore!”
Our conversation pretty much ended with that and I’m incapable of asking him what exactly happened.
So for references sake:
What exactly broke Soul Calibur II so that it became unplayable?
Step Guard.
Edit: Wait, let me be more specific.
Step Guard and what it did to the basic mechanics of the entire game. Step > B > A > Step turned into Step > B > A. Which in turn tuned the game into a turtle-fest, even when rushing you’re playing safe the whole time. This in turn led to dull matches and really restricted strategies.
I had more fun watching the T4 finals at EVO than ANY part of SC2 there.
Agreed w/ step-guard.
Combine that w/ too many verticals, and even worse some horizontals, not tracking like they should. Those are the two main things, IMO.
I agree in all high tier play its always some lame Ivy player, its no fun.
Yeh, Ivy is pretty hard to get into. But when you finally slip past that tight wall of biting defense, damn if it doesn’t feel good. coughcough I mean, yeh I havea really difficult time actually trying to hit Ivy agianst a player with any skill.
Restricted strategies = using the 5-10 moves you have that track
In the cases of people who have moves that track awesome, but are too slow, they might as well not attack actively at all, which is pretty much 2/3rds of the cast.
I wonder how much they will adjust the engine for SCIII and if will actually be worth $50.
I don’t get it. Since it seems all cross the board that SCII is crap, then why don’t people just play SCI instead?
Step guard didn’t break SC2, lack of reliable tracking didn’t break SC2, (though it helped).
2G did.
-Syn
(and if you don’t know what that is…well, you just don’t know SC2)
SC1 wasn’t on a console most people actually owned- why it isn’t played.
I’m hoping SC3 uses the SC1 gameplay engine, which was perfect, maybe with a small spice-up of some sort.
I’d imagine you’d be a bit more specific. If you mean 2G post GI, yes, it was a bug. Did it break the game? Nah.
Now, using 2G for stance cancelling, that severely messed things up. Nightmare’s 3**-2G is just to mean to be safe.
The restriction of every character to a very limited set of moves hurt SC2. Most strings don’t track, and most strings that can go low or mid can be blocked correctly on reaction. A lot of the moves that actually give you some control or strategy in the match (those that create 50/50 situations) have to be critical hits, and likely not safe to throw out as a poke, such as Cerv’s 3A+B. The system feels like it was created for the benefit of the character models to look pretty, and not for the sake of the fighting. This led things to feeling very random such as attacking during super step animation, no consistency in what style of moves leave you at what kind of advantage/disadvantage on block/hit/CH. With a limited way to excert control over a match, you’re leftwith a poking match. Little fun to watch, little fun to play.
It’s because Soul Caliber is all about button mashing.
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the use of 2g actually made sc2 a good game. nothing is broken from what i remember . 2g took alot of scrubbiness out of the game. its a very balanced game.
So what if it’s balanced if it’s boring as hell??
All that turtling and Xianghua playing killed it at the end. In the end of Soul Calibur anybody good could learn Xianghua in a matter of weeks. Xianghua wasn’t as bad as T4 Jin but she harbored on being broken. To counter her you either had to have an awesome Taki, Ivy or Sophitia and maybe if your Cassandra was up to speed her too. Talim could get with her but you had to be near God with her as well, to beat even the average Xianghua player meant you had to either mirror her or be awesome with your characters and still it would come down to the wire because it was Xianghua and she was broken.
She was one of the few characters with juggles and even had juggle mixups. Her juggles did about 25-40% of your life giving which one you did. On top of that she had MANY moves that were in and around 16 frames and lower. The most broken thing about her was the 22B side step sword twirl. It had horizontal properties could come from either side and it launched. It could only be blocked or you had to step with it, and to step with it was a task in itself because you might step right into it. The move was broken and easily abusable. She had great speed naturally and her range and power was so deceptive she was always the best pick to place high or win a tournament with.
I blame X. And I was an X whore. She killed Sc2.
Thanks for the feedback guys. I think I understand now.